The man who sparked Kevin Sheedy's fascination with Aboriginal Australia

By Martin Flanagan

I once asked Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy where his fascination with Aboriginal Australia began.

He told me there was an Aboriginal player from Tasmania at Richmond during his playing days called Derek Peardon. Sheedy said Peardon was a very quiet man who hardly ever spoke. This intrigued the ever curious Sheedy, whose magpie brain started asking the question: what does this word Aboriginal mean?

And so began the quest that led Sheedy to discard the traditional Victorian notion that, in Sheedy's words, Australia ends at the Murray River. He discovered northern Australia and that led in time to his relationship with Michael Long, which in turn led to changes in the character of Australian football that no one had previously imagined and events like Dreamtime at the G ...

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Derek Peardon will be at Saturday night's Dreamtime game. He will be presented to the Richmond fans at the Punt Road end. The story every Tiger fan needs to know is that the first Aboriginal player in their club's history was born and spent his early childhoods on Cape Barren Island in the Furneaux group off the north-east coast of Tasmania. He has few memories of that time - one is living in a tent and eating wallaby, every part of it.

Peardon in his playing days with the Tigers.

When he was five, he was shaken awake in the night and taken by the authorities, ostensibly on the grounds that he was being neglected. His sister Annette, three years older, was stolen earlier the same day. She remembers Derek calling for his mother in the car. "He was calling, 'Mama! Mama! Mama!' That's what he called me afterwards." Annette says their mother "kidnapped us back but they soon caught us". Derek Peardon never saw his mother again.

The siblings were placed in orphanages half the length of Launceston apart. On Sundays, Annette walked for two hours see her younger brother. Annette says, "I've always been a bit strong and mouthy." She saw "Derek wasn't coping very well". When I asked Derek, he explained the shock of the new environment by saying, "There were 50-odd boys there." Fifty-odd people was a lot of people after Cape Barren Island.

His life was institutionalised. He went to school each day then returned to the orphanage, getting out for the odd picnic and occasionally to watch the local footy club, City South. At school, he excelled at running and football. At 15, representing Tasmania, he shared the medal for the best player at the under-16 national carnival. As he pointed out to me when we spoke for the first time in 2007, "That was like being No. 1 pick in the draft today."

Suddenly, there was a queue of AFL/VFL clubs at the orphanage's door. St Kilda, Richmond, Geelong, Carlton. He was taken to a St Kilda game. In the rooms afterwards, he saw Darrel Baldock, possibly Tasmania's greatest ever player. "He wasn't that big," he recalled. "He had stop marks all down his back." It was the orphanage that decided he was going to Richmond. He was told a week before he flew out. No one told Annette. She had to contact the Social Welfare department to find out where her younger brother had gone.

Melbourne terrified him - too big, too many people. "I couldn't put two words together." He played in an under-17 premiership at Richmond, then an under-19 premiership. Then, in 1969 at the age of 20, he broke into Richmond's greatest ever team.

He wanted to play on the wing but Richmond had the legendary centre line of Bourke, Barrot and Clay. He debuted on the half-back flank. Annette was back on Cape Barren Island by then. "There was no television in those days but the old people would all sit outside with their little transistors waiting to hear Derek's name."

He played nine games then did his back at training. He missed the finals but is in the premiership photo for that year. He made it back into the seniors but injured his knee and, by 1972, he was back in Tasmania again. He played in a state premiership with City South. A mate of mine was at that game. When I asked him to describe Derek Peardon as a player, he said, "Like a panther. Strong and fast." He won the Northern Tasmanian Football Association best and fairest, then played one year with a Hobart club but didn't like Hobart. Too big, too many people. He's never been back.

He says his best year of footy was when he played with St Marys in the Fingal association.

He was too old and had a bad knee but was talked into coming out of retirement. He kicked the goal against Swansea at Swansea that got them into the finals. They finished fourth, won three in a row to go premiers. "They were a bunch of kids who turned into men overnight. The whole town got behind us." That's what he played football for – the comradeship. And winning premierships. He proudly tells me he won six of them.

Annette says Derek has always been a loner. "He's very quiet - but it's like he's always thinking something". In 1996, she took him on a tour around Tasmania introducing him to Aboriginal people who knew different parts of his story so that he could learn where he came from.

Around the same time, British theatre personality Sir Peter Ustinov passed through Launceston making a documentary and chanced upon the story of Derek Peardon after being taken to a game of football. Sir Peter got Derek, Annette and another sister Dale together for the first time since all three were stolen and flew them to Cape Barren Island. One of Derek's only childhood memories was kicking a plastic footy against a tree. They found the tree. Then Annette took him to their mother's grave.

I tracked Derek Peardon down in 2007 after Kevin Sheedy challenged me to do so. I met a man who was happy to talk and remarkably free of bitterness. The phrase that recurs in his conversation is, "But it wasn't meant to be". When I asked him if he had been lucky or unlucky in life, he said he didn't know. "I came from a little island in Bass Strait and I played 20 games for Richmond. What are the odds of that?" His sister tells me he barracks for Richmond in a semi-humorous way that suggests his passion can be overwhelming at times.

He left Melbourne in 1972. He's never been back. Apart from that one flight to Cape Barren Island with Peter Ustinov, he hasn't been in a plane. The Tigers have been chasing him for the past six years to get him to Melbourne for the Dreamtime game. This year, club official Simon Matthews invited his sister Annette to come with him. She rang Derek and said, "We're going".

He'll be attending the pre-match dinner. He hasn't been to a dinner in 30 years. There'll be a big crowd. He hasn't seen a big crowd since those long ago days when he played for the Tigers. Derek Peardon says he doesn't know whether to be nervous or happy. This is where you come in, Tiger fans. You've never been accused of lacking passion. If anyone ever deserved a heartfelt welcome to Dreamtime at the G, it's Derek Peardon.